Since first
being published in 1967— and despite being considered one of the
great modern novels—Kurt Vonnegut’s time-hopping,
semiauto-biographical, antiwar classic,
Slaughterhouse-Five, has been and continues
to be banned from classrooms and libraries the world over. This
is due to what is often described by those who censor it as its
“obscene” content. A different view was held by Bruce Severy, a
twenty-six-year-old English teacher at Drake High School, North
Dakota, in 1973, who decided to use the novel as a teaching aid
in his classroom, much to the delight of his students. The head
of the school board, Charles McCarthy, had other ideas, however:
He demanded that all thirty-two copies be burned in the school’s
furnace. Many of the students protested the decision; some even
refused to hand their books back. Their admirable stance was
ignored. On November 16, 1973, an angry and disappointed Vonnegut
wrote to McCarthy to make his feelings known. His powerful letter
failed to generate a reply.

Here’s the letter. I’ve highlighted some of the more interesting
parts.

November 16,
1973

Dear Mr. McCarthy:

I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake
School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have
been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.

Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is
evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from
Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to
you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I
am.

I want you to know, too, that my publisher and I have done
absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting news from Drake. We
are not clapping each other on the back, crowing about all the
books we will sell because of the news. We have declined to go on
television, have written no fiery letters to editorial pages,
have granted no lengthy interviews. We are angered and sickened
and saddened. And no copies of this letter have been sent to
anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a
strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake, who have
done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of their
children and then in the eyes of the world. Do you have the
courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people,
or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?

I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television
that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort
of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds
of young people. I am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one
years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with
tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three
adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of them are farmers.
I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a
Purple Heart. I have earned whatever I own by hard work. I have
never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted
with young people and by young people that I have served on the
faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City
College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen
invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high
schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools than
those of any other living American fiction writer.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated
persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not
argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be
kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that
some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people
speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking
men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know
that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage
children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was
evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to
respond, in effect, “Yes, yes— but it still remains our right and
our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to
be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is
also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that
responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then
people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your
own children are entitled to call you that.

I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the
outcry from all over the country about what you have done. Well,
you have discovered that Drake is a part of American
civilization, and your fellow Americans can’t stand it that you
have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn
from this that books are sacred to free men for very good
reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which
hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow
all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your
own.

If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact
have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the
education of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was
a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when
you denounced and then burned books— books you hadn’t even read.
You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of
opinions and information, in order that they will be better
equipped to make decisions and to survive.

Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am
very real.